Draco was bored. Hopelessly, terribly bored. To someone on the outside, this might seem like a very hard idea to grasp. The filthy Death Eater, Draco Malfoy, not prancing around in sheer delight at being in a Hogwarts run by the Dark Lord? Preposterous. Outrageous. Nonsense. He could do as he pleased now – torture first years, terrify classmates, skive off classes, nick food from the kitchen…He was hardly even a student anymore – merely a spectator in the back of a classroom, a tenant at the Hogwarts Inn. The grounds were completely his to explore, the rules his to bend, Hell was finally his to raise! And yet, Draco Malfoy found himself spending most of his time sulking down in the dungeons, upset, lonely, and very much bored.
Because to be quite honest, "new" Hogwarts wasn't as glamorous to him as it was to the other young Death Eaters. It just wasn't…It wasn't right. It didn't feel like Hogwarts anymore, like the same safe place he'd spent the last six years of his life. It was…colder. Definitely darker. And no matter where you were in the castle, it always felt like you were stuck in the dungeons, and not the pleasant, common room parts of the dungeon either. Fear seemed to have been installed into every crevice in the school, and the ever-present Slytherin banners just seemed tow ash the place of any other color. And while Draco took pride in the emerald and silver that surrounded him, he couldn't help but miss what the castle used to be.
He missed the splendid feasts, the brightness of the lights in the Great Hall and how warm they made you feel on a rainy day. He missed the comfort and security he got from just being inside the castle, and though he'd rather trade wardrobes with a Weasley than ever admit it out loud, he missed the other Houses' colors and how much life the gave to the place. He missed the happy portraits, the bright faces, the laughter, the humanity. He missed his daily banter with those he could call friends, the lightness in the air that no one seemed to really realize was there until it wasn't. He even missed Dumbledore, the poor sod. But he never dwelled long on that thought – it often made him ill.
But what Draco missed most of all, above everything else, was a certain bespectacled git with untidy black hair and piercing green eyes.
He would rather die than openly admit it – in fact, when he first realized it, he swore to himself that he'd kiss Ron Weasley full on the mouth before ever uttering the words. But Draco Malfoy really, truly missed Harry Potter. He missed their rivalry, their quarrels, the hate-filled comebacks Potter would throw his way in a stupid attempt to sound witty. He missed seeing (and glaring at) that unmistakable mane of hair as it passed him in the corridors, missed having him there to pick on. Because honestly, Potter just got so damn defensive and offended and it was just so funny. He made Draco's day brighter by being an insufferable prat, odd as it was to admit. But with him off doing stupid Gryffindor-y who-knows-what to defeat the stupid sodding Dark Lord, there was no one there to occupy Draco's time, no one to watch out for in the corridors, no one who dared to oppose him. And it was just so bloody boring. If Draco didn't know that bringing the ugly git back would mean his death (and thus a permanent end to Draco's fun), he'd go after him as soon as he could, demanding that he stopped being such a sodding Gryffindor right now before Draco got really angry.
Now he hadn't grown fond of the kid or anything – no, God forbid Draco ever, ever do that. It was just…when you spend six years of your life talking to someone daily, even if just to tell them what a git they really are, when they're gone, you're sure to notice. It's sure to bother you, maybe even upset you a bit. After all, a piece of your daily schedule had been torn away, and you certainly didn't ask for it to happen, and suddenly he wasn't there to torture, and why oh WHY did THIS Harry Potter have to be the bloody Chosen One? Why couldn't it have been some other stupid Gryffindor, one that Draco didn't invest HIS precious time in torturing? It wasn't fair to him. And honestly, between the loss of his favorite toy and the serious aural downgrade of the Hogwarts castle, how did anyone expect him to be anything but miserable and bored? And it was all the fault of the bloody Chosen One and his inability to destroy the Dark Lord while within Draco's grasp.
Yes, if Potter survived this whole ordeal, the stupid bleeding git was going to pay for making him suffer.